Satisfying the Need for Speed

July 14, 2008

For some of us Ethernet has been around since we were born while for others we still remember mainframe SNA networks as a method of sharing information across the corporate LAN. Well just recently, Ethernet had its “35th birthday“ as a technology according to the Ethernet sage Bob Metcalfe. Supposedly the first memo on Ethernet was sent officially on May 22, 1973.

Since then, tremendous advances have been made and the technology has been standardized and deployed with well over 350 million ports shipped not only across corporate America, but also within our everyday lives. Integrated within every PC manufactured today, Ethernet is truly “everywhere” due to the advent of Wi-Fi (802.11 wireless Ethernet standard) enabling devices such as smartphones, set-top boxes, home gateways, HDTVs, VoIP phones, as well as at every corner Starbucks, McDonalds, airport and coffee shop for high-speed internet access.

As the Internet continues to mature, bandwidth hungry applications are being created and delivered daily. Most IT managers have or are in the process of adding bigger, faster WAN connections to meet their corporate end users’ communications needs. Due to the commonality of the interface, low prices due to high volumes, and simplicity of Ethernet, a recent study by Heavy Reading, indicated that nearly 90 percent of carriers worldwide had either deployed or are in the process of deploying Ethernet based WAN connections, which were traditionally dominated by private line, frame relay or ATM service offerings.

So why are these new Ethernet service pipes valuable to both today’s IT and finance organizations?

Cost: Bandwidth has declined dramatically from approximately $300/Mbps to now less than $100/Mbps for Ethernet-based services
Lower OPEX: Almost all PCs/LANs run on Ethernet today, so providing a native Ethernet WAN connection avoids multiple protocol conversion devices and cards in routers by simplifying the connection.
Optimized: Ethernet is optimized for IP/packet-based traffic which allows convergence of all traffic types—voice, video, data—over one connection at very high speeds that can be dynamically upgraded remotely from 1Mbps to10 Gigabit speeds without rolling trucks or upgrading to the next higher legacy service e.g. DS-3 to OC-3 etc.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Ethernet as a transport service has been “carrier hardened” to ensure high service reliability (99.999%), sub-50ms SONET like restoration times, and carriers are guaranteeing certain mandated levels of performance with more cost effective pipes

Ethernet 2.0

So what’s next? Ethernet continues to mature with recent standardization of key Operations, Administration and Management (OAM) standards that enable carriers and end users to better monitor and manage these high-speed Ethernet connections.

Several recent standards have been ratified enabling better end-to-end troubleshooting and visibility (IEEE 802.1ag, 802.3ah) of Ethernet link failures and a plethora of new performance measures (Y.1731, RFC 2544) such as packet loss, latency, and delay metrics for IT managers to better assess what is happening to their traffic over the those network links.

As Ethernet is still fairly new as a WAN transport service, I’ve put together a short list of items you may want to assess as you select your Ethernet service provider.

TIP 1: Get at least 3 bids if you can. While this may be your IT/Finance staff’s general rule of thumb, keep in mind Ethernet services can vary greatly due to a simple statistic: Recent Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) statistics indicate that only 14-15% of business buildings in North America are actually connected via fiber. Thus depending on where your locations are and where the carrier’s network reaches, the price can vary greatly depending on whether your location(s) are actually “on-net” (their facilities) versus “off-net” perhaps using/leasing another carriers network facilities to reach your location.

TIP 2: Ask to see the service provider’s service level guarantees. While there are carrier Ethernet certification bodies such as the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), each service provider can offer different classes of service or CoS depending on how they have implemented their offerings. It is not uncommon to see typical bronze, silver and gold service levels with differentiated service performance guarantees for key metrics such as minimum packet loss, downtime, end-to-end delay, or even guarantees for voice quality of VoIP traffic as measured by Mean Opinion Scores (MOS). So ask to see the service guarantees and/or SLA parameters that the carrier can provide for each Ethernet connection as the SLA may vary if you are on-net versus off-net. Also understand and identify any warranty and/or penalties the carrier may incur in the event of outages.

TIP 3: Identify and understand the feature capabilities of the gear terminating your connection at your Point-of-Presence or POP location. Carriers may use different types of NTEs or Network Terminating Equipment at your site as the demarcation point to your network. Depending on the make and quality of the gear, various SLA measures may be accessible for monitoring your connection’s performance. Consider access to this type of information in your decision, namely: MEF certifications, 802.1ag, Y.1731 support and interoperability results on an end-to-end basis. Also consider investing in suppliers that can offer integrated performance management tools or probe capabilities that monitor key metrics and applications that are running over your Ethernet network for troubleshooting assistance. As a provider of these types of boxes, its actually fairly common for the actual business end-user IT managers to contact us directly for the feature datasheets and performance data just to understand the capabilities of their circuits.

TIP 4: Ask for trial period or guarantee to ensure the service is working as promised. Many carriers will offer trial periods or “return privileges” should the service not perform as expected with your specific applications or network configuration. Once you have your trial circuit up and running, consider using an SLA monitoring tool to measure your applications specific traffic and metrics. For example, some of the new Ethernet equipment suppliers actually provide these capabilities with embedded test suites to validate the performance as used in the actual MEF certifications.

Hopefully these tips will help your selection process as well as demonstrating to your CFO that you are getting good price/value by subscribing to an Ethernet service” while enabling you to assess and identify your new Ethernet network’s overall performance. So in summary, Ethernet is the next wave in networking services enabling a viable alternative to move your company’s network traffic to a more cost effective platform that scales gracefully as you grow your business.

Greg Gum is Vice President - Marketing & Business Development at ANDA Networks. ANDA Networks, Inc., headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, provides Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) certified access, aggregation and transport products to carriers worldwide. The ANDA EtherTone® family of products enable carriers to deliver Ethernet private lines, converged VoIP, and circuit-to-packet managed services by leveraging highly economical Ethernet technology.

Photo on home page courtesy Freefoto.com.

Posted by Carl · Filed Under Uncategorized